As networks continue to dramatically grow and scale up, boundaries of how to perform operations, administration, and maintenance (OAM), and telemetry and service level agreement (SLA) reporting at scale are tested and stretched. In computer networking, OAM includes processes, functions, activities, tools, etc. that are designed to monitor network operation in order to detect network faults and to measure performance of the network. In-band OAM is an ‘always on’ service that adds forwarding path or service path information in addition to other information and/or statistics to all network traffic. The information can be very detailed information about the forwarding behavior that every packet in the network experiences. If in-band OAM is enabled for every packet in a network with all features, an enormous amount of data could potentially be created. Additionally, network operators may desire to know the path a packet traverses for network planning or troubleshooting purposes.